"This is one of those just-add-water areas," says center Director Bob Hutmacher. "Water availability is a constant issue, so there is a tradition of water-related work, like irrigation issues and crop adaptability to saline soils and water."
Hutmacher is a leading expert in cotton, a crop once ubiquitous in this region.
"But farmers are diversifying, adding more high-value and vegetable crops," Hutmacher says. "It can be risky, given the water issue, but they have to widen their portfolio in order to make it in this business."
As a result, the crops and experiments at West Side are more diverse. You see fields of pima cotton, with their lovely, cream-colored flowers, surrounded by acres of row and orchard crops and a growing number of potential biofuel feed crops, like canola and switch grass.
You see long, tall conservation equipment, the work of Cooperative Extension specialist Jeff Mitchell. Mitchell is a tireless pioneer of conservation tillage in California, an approach to tilling that leaves more crop residue on the soil and emits less dust and greenhouse gases into the environment. Conservation tillage research investigates impacts on crop responses, soil and water quality to determine which practices can leave fields healthier, streams and skies clearer and reduces fuel use and wear and tear on tractors.
"Growers are interested in conservation tillage, as long as it doesn't hurt plant establishment and yield," says Hutmacher, standing in the shadow of one of Mitchell's contraptions. "They can't afford for too many seedling transplants not to take."
Mitchell was here a minute ago, dragging some pipes and tubes from his office to his truck, off to make improvements to yet another system he's testing in a nearby grower's field. Mitchell blows through the Kearney and West Side stations like a dust devil, his mind and body moving a mile a minute.
"I tell Jeff, ‘When I need to talk to you, I'm going to bring a lasso, so I can keep you in one place for more than a second,'" Hutmacher says with a smile. "But that's Jeff. He gives it his all."
They all do. With their sun-burned faces and dirt under their fingernails, these Research and Extension Center scientists have a can-do attitude, mandatory when staffing is lean, projects are diverse and the very nature of agriculture is in flux.
Agriculture isn't just about food anymore. It's about promoting health and saving the environment. It's about securing a safe food supply, finding alternatives to ozone-depleting fumigants and growing crops that can be converted to alternative sources of energy. It's about life.
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